The Eastern Regional Conference

by Jacob Clagg Director of Communications

At last, we come to the final and first region in the Churches of God, General Conference (CGGC). Like most of our regions, the Eastern Regional Conference (ERC) was not born with the name “Eastern Regional Conference” but was, at the outset, plainly, “The Church of God.” Names are often retroactive, and because of this, pinning down a date for something like the creation of the ERC becomes a subjective question as much as an objective one.

Take, for instance, the fact that the CGGC as a whole has decided that the birth of the denomination began in 1825. If we could ask John Winebrenner himself in 1825, he probably would have contention with the idea that he had just begun a new denomination. It was, after all, explicitly not his intention to found a new denomination. C.H. Forney, in his book, History of the Churches of God in The United States of North America, quotes Winebrenner as saying he “had not the beginning the remotest idea of organizing a distinct or separate body of people.”1 His goal was to reform and to go back to the historic and biblical definitions of church, creating, he hoped, an umbrella beneath which all other tribes of Christianity might fall.

The Church of God, as a distinct denomination, began not with the declaration of a new denomination, or even a new eldership, but with revivals and tent meetings, as C.H. Forney puts it, “at Harrisburg, near Shiremanstown, at Lisburn, and Linglestown, at which point [John Winebrenner] labored as a Reformed minister, and where some hundreds - “multitudes” - were converted before a church was organized.”2 This is to say that, even before there was a region or an eldership, there were hundreds of believers. While we might pin down the first eldership to 1830, or the moment this first eldership was retroactively referred to as the East Pennsylvania Eldership to 1845, the more important historical fact is that the heart of the CGGC, as it still beats today, was birthed here. And it was born in the true conviction and conversion of men and women who had spiritual transformation. They had neither contemporary nor traditional liturgies but had authentic religion with God through revivals and prayer. While liturgies have certainly changed in the 199 years since 1825, the ERC maintains its desire for authentic religion. In this issue about the ERC, you’ll read all about new ways that our churches are reaching deep into their communities, experimenting with new forms of worship, or perhaps, like Winebrenner himself, uncovering old ways of being the Church of God.

1 Forney, C.H. The History of the Churches of God In the United States of North America, Publishing House of the Churches of God, 1914, pg. 20